October 25, 2021

Towns Named Hollywood

By roadsrus

There are lots of Hollywoods and few of them too. If you get caught up in them, you will be led to believe that there are between 30 and 40 of them. However, many of them are appropriately fantasies like the Hollywood in California, which actually doesn’t exist. I could only find 7 real Hollywoods in the entire world.

The most famous Hollywood of all is the dream factory in California. But actually it does not exist. If you check a Rand McNally map of Los Angeles, you will not find Hollywood. There’s a West Hollywood but no pure Hollywood. This was a shock to me. Here is what happened. Way back in 1910, Hollywood merged with Los Angeles. One source, a genuine wag, said of Hollywood, CA that it’s, “A district of LA and a place where dreams are made (sometimes).” Amen.

The other actual Hollywoods are towns in Alabama, Maryland, South Carolina, Washington, Pennsylvania, and the large city in Florida just south of Fort Lauderdale that contains about 141,000 people. Yes, there are only 6 of them in the United States. West Hollywood, CA has only about 34,000 residents, making it the 2nd largest Hollywood on Planet Earth if you split hairs.

The internet will try to convince you that there are 24 Hollywoods in the USA and 6 others around the world. Just try to find the Hollywoods in Singapore, Russia, and Worcestershire, England. The Hollywood in West Virginia was placed on a 1911 map and does not otherwise exist. The Hollywood in Oregon is a neighborhood in Portland. Several Hollywoods are either unincorporated or are neighborhoods in larger communities like the one in Kentucky that is actually part of Lexington.

geodatos, a website, gets it fairly right when it says there are only 4 Hollywoods, but one of them is the Hollywood in California. irishcentral.com deals with the 2 supposed Hollywoods in Ireland. It reports that the name Hollywood actually got its start in Ireland, County Wicklow. It says that the Wicklow Gap is one of 2 passes through the Wicklow Mountains and that the lovely little village of Hollywood is nestled in the center of these mountains. The photo of the Hollywood sign above was taken in Hollywood, Ireland. The shamrock just above is from clipart-library.com.

Bits of Trivia. Four of the existing US Hollywoods have similar populations. The Hollywood in Alabama and the one in Maryland both contain about 1,000 people. The Hollywoods in Pennsylvania and Washington both have about 800 residents. I tried very hard to find Hollywood Heights in the Chicago area but then learned that it’s in Collinsville near St. Louis.

Hank

About roadsrus

Since the beginning, I've had to avoid writing about the downside of travel in order to sell more than 100 articles. Just because something negative happened doesn't mean your trip was ruined. But tell that to publishers who are into 5-star cruise and tropical beach fantasies. I want to tell what happened on my way to the beach, and it may not have been all that pleasant. My number one rule of the road is...today's disaster is tomorrow's great story. My travel experiences have appeared in about twenty magazines and newspapers. I've been in all 50 states more than once and more than 50 countries. Ruth and I love to travel internationally--Japan, Canada, China, Argentina, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, etc. Within the next 2 years we will have visited all of the European countries. But our favorite destination is Australia. Ruth and I have been there 9 times. I've written a book about Australia's Outback, ALONE NEAR ALICE, which is available through both Amazon & Barnes & Noble. My first fictional work, MOVING FORWARD, GETTING NOWHERE, has recently been posted on Amazon. It's a contemporary, hopefully funny re-telling of The Odyssey. View all posts by roadsrus
This entry was posted on Monday, October 25th, 2021 at 8:25 pm and posted in Towns with Odd Names. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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